On the morning of November 19, 2025, Professor Shi Ningzhong, former president of Northeast Normal University, leader of the revision group for the Mathematics Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education and the Mathematics Curriculum Standards for General High Schools, expert member of the National Textbook Committee, and member of the Primary and Secondary School Textbook Review Committee of the Ministry of Education, was invited to the School of Teacher Education, Nanjing Normal University to deliver a special lecture themed "Changes in Mathematics Curriculum and Its Teaching". The lecture was hosted by Professor Ma Fu from our school, with the participation of Dean Feng Jianjun, Professor Gu Jiling, Teacher Zhao Xiaoyan, Teacher Zhu Chenfei, as well as first-year and second-year postgraduates majoring in Subject Teaching (Mathematics).

Centering on the core achievements of mathematics education reform, President Shi conducted an in-depth analysis in three aspects: "fundamental changes in curriculum objectives", "initial formation of a reasonable curriculum structure", and "clarity in the teaching of core literacy", providing guidance for postgraduates in mathematics education to understand the mathematics curriculum and implement core literacy.

Ⅰ Fundamental Changes in Curriculum Objectives

 President Shi pointed out that the focus of mathematics teaching should shift from "teachers imparting knowledge" to "students understanding knowledge, accumulating experience, and developing literacy". It is necessary to break the traditional knowledge-oriented teaching logic, and especially pay attention to "how students acquire knowledge". The formation of students' literacy has phased characteristics, and teachers should gradually realize the progress from experience perception to conceptual understanding, and then to practical mastery in combination with the cognitive levels of students in different learning stages. To a certain extent, this explains why teachers will not be replaced by AI in the digital intelligence era.

Ⅱ Initial Formation of a Reasonable Curriculum Structure

President Shi introduced the historical evolution of China's mathematics curriculum structure, clarifying that the mathematics curriculum has initially established the curriculum organization form of "field + theme + unit". Currently, the mathematics curriculum in the compulsory education stage retains four major fields: Number and Algebra, Graphics and Geometry, Statistics and Probability, and Comprehensive and Practical Activities. President Shi further elaborated on the direct impact of the curriculum structure on textbook revision in detail through cases such as "horizontal form represents computational principle, vertical form represents algorithm", "the importance of negative numbers participating in the four arithmetic operations", and "the definition of absolute value".

Ⅲ Clarity in the Teaching of Core Literacy

Finally, President Shi clarified that to implement mathematical core literacy, teaching should adopt the model of "overall thematic design and phased unit implementation" based on the curriculum structure. He suggested coordinating lesson preparation at the school level to help teachers grasp the main line of the knowledge structure throughout the entire learning stage and the positioning of their own teaching content. Teaching needs to fulfill three core requirements: formulating overall objectives oriented to core literacy, comprehensively mastering structured content, and adopting teaching methods that stimulate students' thinking. In particular, through topics such as "how to understand real numbers" and "interpreting functions, limits, and the concept of multiplication from a high-level perspective", President Shi encouraged postgraduates to make solid efforts in deeply understanding mathematics, recognize the distinction between mathematics and daily life, and highlight the educational value of mathematics' "abstraction" and "imagination". In the Q&A and interaction session, students consulted President Shi on issues including "artificial intelligence", "continuity of real numbers", "the importance of teaching aids", and "the significance of measurement in mathematics". Dean Feng Jianjun discussed the similarities and differences between "experience" and "basic mathematical activity experience" with President Shi from an educational perspective. Professor Ma Fu also shared his insights gained from mathematics learning and textbook compilation, encouraging postgraduates to undergo the journey of "seeing mountains as mountains, seeing mountains not as mountains, and seeing mountains again as mountains" in their mathematical studies, and to deepen their understanding of mathematics through repeated cycles of "understanding" and "not understanding".

​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​This lecture was not only an academic feast but also a starting point for the teaching practice of postgraduates majoring in mathematics subject teaching. Combining the evolution of curriculum standards with local teaching practice, it not only ignited the students' enthusiasm for reconstructing teaching design from a structural perspective but also provided them with rich materials and thinking methods for their teaching practice and research.